According to USA Today/Suffolk poll
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) has been working feverishly to convince former President Donald Trump to select him as his running mate for the November election. The South Carolina senator spent the last several months showering Trump with praise and making a case that Black voters should side with the Republican presidential nominee.
While speaking on Fox News on March 14, Scott reiterated one of his bolder claims: That Black Americans and other minority groups were “better off under Trump.”
“Why are African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Republicans, Men women all looking at Donald Trump with new eyes? It is simple,” said Scott. “We were better off under Trump. Economically, the lowest unemployment rates for all racial demographics.”
While allies of the former president began circulating fake A.I. photos of him surrounded by Black persons, Trump remains unpopular with Black voters. Support for Biden has decreased somewhat among Black voters, but there’s no evidence that there’s a mass exodus to Trump underway.
A January USA Today/Suffolk found that about 83% of Black voters thought the legal actions against Trump were “appropriate,” and only 12% of Black voters supported Trump, which was the exact percentage of Black support that exit polls showed in 2020. So the idea that “all” African-Americans are looking at Trump “with new eyes” isn’t exactly accurate.
Unemployment numbers are where things veer into the straight-up falsehood territory.
Data from the U.S. Department of Labor reveals that Black unemployment hit an all-time high under the Trump presidency, peaking at around 16.8% in May 2020. Black unemployment hit an all-time low of under 5% last year under the Biden administration.
While Trump can’t be entirely blamed for the economic turmoil caused by a global pandemic, his campaign also can’t claim credit for fictitious unemployment numbers.
In being generous and in assuming that Scott was referring to the overall unemployment rate, he would still be wrong. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, the overall unemployment rate hit 3.4% last year — the lowest it’s been in more than 50 years.
The Trump campaign and his surrogates’ efforts to paint him as the patron saint of Black people is continuing to fall flat.
